The oldest known plague outbreak struck hunter-gatherers 5,500 years ago
Plague DNA in ancient graves near Siberia’s Lake Baikal suggests the disease threatened people long before farming and crowded settlements.
Category: Science
How real is the Cyclops in ‘The Odyssey’?
The iconic one-eyed monster coming to movie screens in July in The Odyssey might have more in common with tiny water critters than with humans.
‘This was a pioneering achievement’: Stone Age people put up posts to observe the solstices near Stonehenge long before the stones of sacred site were placed
The discovery of two ancient holes at Stonehenge suggests people placed posts there to help observe the summer and winter solstices around 5,000 years ago.
A secretive Chinese probe has just arrived at one of Earth’s ‘quasi-moons’ and will soon attempt a first-of-its-kind landing
China’s Tianwen-2 mission has arrived at the quasi-moon Kamo’oalewa, which orbits the sun alongside Earth. The secretive probe will scoop up samples from our temporary
Atlantic ‘cold blob’ is responsible for shifts in the Indian summer monsoon that threaten over 1 billion people
An abnormally cold patch of water in the North Atlantic Ocean has triggered changes in the Indian summer monsoon via the jet stream winds, new
Hubble Sees Swarm of Galaxies
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy cluster MACS0329-0211.
Seven Perfect Shuffles Randomize a Deck of Cards. But How Many Sloppy Ones?
In 1992, mathematicians famously proved that seven “riffle shuffles” — the kind where a player splits a deck of cards into two piles, then uses
A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading
It’s just a matter of time before Sporothrix brasiliensis reaches the U.S. a CDC expert says.
A ‘Super El Niño’ may be on the way. What does that mean?
Past super El Niños have brought bad flooding, deadly fires and disease outbreaks. Climate experts already expect “shockingly high” temps this winter.
‘It’s a huge deal’: Archaeologists discover second cannonball from the Battle of the Alamo, and it was likely fired by Texans
Archaeologists have discovered a second cannonball from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, and now they have one from each side.
‘A mixture from zero to infinity’: Physicists split apart a photon — and ended up with an improbable swarm of particles
Physicists have found that splitting a photon would lead to a complex state that may change the way we think of particles.
Oldest known plague victims found in a 5,500-year-old burial ground in Siberia — and many of them were children
The oldest known evidence of the plague killing people has been found in Siberia, and it carried a gene that may have made it particularly
Diagnostic dilemma: Viral infection caused woman not to recognize her own father
A woman could no longer recognize her father’s face and had trouble holding the details of faces in her mind’s eye.
Watch Venus vanish behind the moon in broad daylight today — without any special equipment
Today (June 17), the moon will pass between Earth and Venus, causing the hellish planet to temporarily disappear from the daytime sky. Here’s what it